Why should you learn by reading?
Because it works!

Rather strangely, you do not see the results in a progressive manner. One day, you realize that you understand something you never learnt. Another day, you are able to notice there are mistakes in the French forum you are visiting. Or you "feel" that you cannot say *si que.
Whatever the case, you are seldom able to link your new knowledge to a particular page you read. There is something exhilarating in the fact of knowing without knowing how.

If you want that reading works, do not turn it into a chore. Human brains tend to like happiness, you know. I am sure you still know by heart the silly little songs you learnt years ago. In French, the title of one of these nursery rhymes is Une Souris verte (A Green Mouse). From the title, you can judge to which point it is the meaning that supports the memory!
Learn happily, you will remember forever.

Since it is a bilingual novel, you may read it whatever your level of French -providing you can read English- but if you use it as a way to improve your French knowledge, it will work better if you are at an intermediate level or higher.

The novel is short, its structure is lineary, but there is no attempt to sift the vocabulary, and the story is told using the past tenses.
Of course, you may think it is an opportunity to enrich your vocabulary. It is.
You may also judge that it will be easier for you to learn French conjugations "in use" than to learn them with conjugation tables.
The answer cannot be general. You are the only one who knows what works best for you.
From what I have been able to observe, the students who obtain the best results (quick, reliable, and at their disposal) built their own tables with the verbs they read (or learn otherwise).
That is the reason why I use this method in the Speaking Workshop. It provides you with a mental table: easy to use in any circumstances, and never forbidden in an examination room.

There are many dialogues. I like to write dialogues because they allow the characters to play on words.
Dialogues teach you the language as it is spoken. Though they are never faulty, they happen to be rather lax.
If you do not know enough to make the difference right now, you will soon.

By the way, I use my novel to teach because I am sure that I won't have copyright conflicts or other legal problems with my own books.
I did not write Marion et François, histoire d'amour as a text-book. But in order to learn living French, my students needed contemporary books.
So, I added the English translation and some exercises when I realized it was impossible to teach using a contemporary novel without infringing dozens of laws. (Things are easier with theater: you can rehearse as much as you want.)

If you regularly read, not only will you ease your learning, but you will quicken it. And you will do so the easiest possible way.
I cannot imagine a reason that would make anyone choose the longest and hardest way. Not only for the obvious reason that it is long and hard, but also because it does not work as well as reading works.

Okay, Gabrielle, that's for the learning part.
But you promised a loving one!

You cannot help loving the heroes of the novel.
I like to write, and I wanted to write a romantic novel, but my fondness for laugh and caricature has somewhat led my project astray.
As my first and prefered reader said: "It is not that the characters lack of youth, beauty, or romanticism, but they win on the tiercé without the right placings." (Pierre, my husband.)

Check by yourself. Flip through the first pages:

Marion et François, histoire d'amour
Marion & François, Story of Love

It is a true love story, and a story of true love.
But as you know from your own life, a living love seldom looks like its brother of paper.
For once, the brother of paper knows and admits what it is: an imitation.

According to the rules of the genre, nothing is missing: there is a man and a woman, money and power, a manor, some horses (no bolting horse, but a mention of the possible scene), etc.
There is even the bad woman who plagues the heroine.

I hope you will have as much happiness when reading Marion et François, histoire d'amour as I had when writing it.

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either The paper book 179 pages, 6.14" x 9.21" ($15.70)

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The large-print version uses Verdana in size 16.